


Haunted

by ShinobiCyrus



Series: WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Tucker. Only Tucker was available. [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Amity Park Is Strange (Danny Phantom), Future Fic, Gen, I'm sure it's a lot to get used to, Or: a desperate normal person finds out an entire goddamn town is haunted, Original Character(s), POV Outsider, Phuong Foley, Tucker-centric phic, and its residents are stranger, because the guy deserves some love, she was just in it for the cheap rent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinobiCyrus/pseuds/ShinobiCyrus
Summary: At the time, Phuong hadn't thought it was all that suspicious that the rent in Amity was so low. Then again, if people had tried to warn her about the ghosts, would she have believed them?She'sstillnot sure she believes it.There were so many logical, non-paranormal explanations that made sense, considering her circumstances...but she's desperate enough to actually call those ghost hunters that were recommended to her.She's not sure what she was expecting, but a handsome man with tied-back dreadlocks and a tacky but endearing Pacific Rim t-shirt was not one of them.
Series: WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Tucker. Only Tucker was available. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108811
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was birthday present I made a few years back for a friend of mine, [Becca](https://thickerthanectoplasm.tumblr.com/). I decided to do something with her character [Phuong](http://thickerthanectoplasm.tumblr.com/post/138873437616/dpocclichecritiquesandpromotions-and-now-its), Tucker’s eventual [wife](http://thickerthanectoplasm.tumblr.com/tagged/phuong/chrono).

_“Oh hun. Nobody warned you about Amity before you moved here, did they?”_

* * *

Phuong was already having second thoughts about calling that number Linh had given her. The woman who answered Fenton Works’ main line was disarmingly chipper, and seemed to accept Phuong’s stuttered, embarrassed explanation of the situation without an ounce of skepticism. 

“I don’t usually work the phones but we’re actually kind of short staffed at the moment,” Phuong had already forgotten her name. Something with an ‘i’? “It doesn’t sound like bloody threats on the walls or ectoplasm clogging the sink level of haunting; we can get a guy over to you tomorrow afternoon, about eleven. Is that okay?”

No, it was perfectly fine. Just the right amount of time for Phuong to hang up and feel foolish for being desperate and jumpy and gullible enough to resort to this, no matter how many times Linh tried to explain it to her. There were so many logical, non-paranormal explanations that made _sense_ , considering her circumstances. Moving to an unfamiliar town, new apartment with its own quirks and night-noises, she wasn’t used to living alone. It had only been two months since the funeral. 

She still had a little camp-out in the living room with her laptop, armored with blankets and the tried and true childhood defense against all manner of monsters by leaving every light on, electric bill be damned. Because she was an _adult_ , dammit.

The pendulum had swung again by morning, frazzled and on edge from yet another sleepless night, the back of her neck prickling with the constant, persistent sensation of not being Alone. She almost jumped out of her skin when the intercom buzzed. 

Past the point of caring, Phuong answered the door with her hair uncombed since yesterday, still wearing sweats and a t-shirt. She didn’t know what she expected- Bill Murray? (preferable) a shifty guy in a tacky redone exterminator’s jumpsuit but for _ghosts?_ (likely) Kate McKinnon? (If only).

….a handsome man with tied-back dreadlocks and a tacky but endearing Pacific Rim t-shirt?

“Uh…Ms. Lôc Thi?” He shifted awkwardly trying to balance the gear hanging off his shoulder, shake her hand, and nudge up the black-rimmed glasses that almost hid the tired bags under his eyes. Phuong was impressed- the pronunciation wasn’t half bad. “I’m Tucker. I hear you’re having a bit of a ghost problem?”

“Lacking a better explanation? Yeah.”

He smiled wryly, like he was enjoying an inside joke. “Just moved here, huh?”

“Why do people keeping _knowing_ that?”

“If you make it past six months, I’m sure you’ll be snerking at tourists with the best of ‘em,” He said, and motioned behind her. “May I come in?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” Against her better judgement, she stepped aside and let him in. “And what’s that supposed to mean, ‘ _if_ I make it six months’?”

“Most people move away before then,” He glanced around her entryway- like he could spot…ghost droppings, or something- spotted her shoes on the mat, and shuffled out of his sneakers. “Didn’t you wonder why the rent was so low?”

She _did_ , actually, but as a grad racing to finish her degree and juggle a job before her loan eligibility expired, she wasn’t in much a position to complain. “I considered mentioning to the landlord that he was undercharging me, but I haven’t gotten around to it, yet.”

“Ha, I’m sure it’s on the top of your To Do list,” he said good-naturedly. The…case hanging on this shoulder reminded Phuong of old sound equipment- thick like a nineties laptop. Tucker walked further into her house, quiet and intrusive in his mismatched superhero socks, and started waving a wand around like some kind of Geiger counter. 

“I heard you talked with Dani.” Phuong resisted scampering over and hiding all the wreckage of her camp-out on the couch. Tucker went by a sad pile of discarded clothes, studying the readings on his…thingy. “She said something about noises? Like people moving in empty rooms? Whispers? Things getting moved?”

“It’s…it’s crazy,” Phuong shook her head, like _she_ wasn’t the one who had called them. “It was probably my neighbors. They’re always too loud.”

“Hmm. Yeah, my neighbors like to break into my place and rearrange my dishes too,” He said, with the same kind of sarcasm Phuong had mastered after years of customer service jobs- so subtle people weren’t sure it was serious or not.

Having taking his ‘readings’ in her living room, he did a cursory sweep over her shelves upon shelves of movies and moved on to the kitchen. 

Phuong stood in the threshold and crossed her arms, biting back a good Ghostbusters joke as he examined her fridge. “Well having a neighbor with a sick sense of humor and a _Poltergeist_ fetish sounds slightly more logical than ‘dead people did it.’” Or it could be like that woman who secretly lived in someone’s attic for years, only coming out when he left. _That_ was an internet search result that had her jumping at every thump on the ceiling. She’d almost _prefer_ grumpy dead people.

“ _This house is cleeeaan_ ,” Tucker said in a tinny, breathy imitation. He held up his buzzing doodad. “But seriously though, this place actually _isn’t_ clean. It’s pretty dang un-clean.”

“What…is that thing?” 

“It has a really, really stupid name,” He sighed. “But it says there’s a… _’Level-1 Non-Manifesting Entity’_ here. Level 1 is good. Non-manifesting is even better. But uh…just to be safe, how about we step outside for a sec-”

“So what does that all mean? Your -airquotes- ‘device’ magically detects a completely invisible and unverifiable thing-”

“Did you just say ‘airquotes?’”

“-that you can _conveniently_ get rid of with- let me guess- an application of super scientific snake oil- ”

“Actually it’s called ecto-rejcto…” He raised his hands and glanced around the kitchen warily. “But maybe we can talk about that _not_ _in the apartment_.”

“I tried being open-minded, I really did. And you seem like a nice guy but I’ve been letting my own issues play tricks on me and I’ve let this farce about ‘hauntings’ and ‘ghost exterminators’ play long enough, so I’m saying sorry in a polite but not really sorry way and the bill be damned but I think I’d like you to leave and-”

Tucker raised a careful eyebrow at her. “…and what?”

And there was a kitchen knife floating next to his head. 

A kitchen knife. Floating.

By itself.

Phuong moved without thinking. Tucker backed away from her, startled, and she shoved him back against the cabinets half a second before the knife flew between them. The half of the blade not embedded in the wall quivered. 

The fridge rumbled and rattled like a phone, trying to vibrate off a table. The cabinets flapped with angry wooden claps, dishes hurled themselves in a ceramic mass suicide. 

Green, spectral hands came next, grasping the edge of the sink pulling…something up. See-through, casting a green glow that thickened and congealed on itss iridescent edges like nuclear waste. A goddamn ghost with a mass of eyes bubbling and popping on its face like zits split open its almost-head like a wound and hissed directly at her. A gaping maw of needle teeth, accusing and furious. 

Tuck stepped in front of her. The wand dangled from a cord at his side. beeping urgently until he picked it up. 

“ _’Possible Level 3 Hazardous Malefactor_.’” He let the thing drop. “Thanks, Jack.”

Phuong clung to his shoulder. “What do we _do_?”

Every single eyeball crammed on the ghost’s headmouthface swiveled at them simultaneously. 

“ _Run_.”

Phuong ran. She turned and bolted for the front door. Tucker grabbed her shoulder and pulled her off-balance. The ghost barreled past where she’d just been, now between them and the only way out of the apartment- unless they wanted to fly out the windo-

The window!

“Bedroom to the left!” She said. “Fire escape!” 

Down the hall, feet thumping. Phuong didn’t look behind them but saw the glow chasing them across the walls. Did ghosts even cast a shadow? You had to have a body for a shadow, right? Not having a body didn’t seem to deter it from doing lots of things. 

Phuong slammed the door and locked it. 

“Nooot really gonna stop it much,” Tucker told her, right as a green claw reached through the door and blindly swiped at her. Phuong backed away, watching as the rest of it pushed itself though it, more green slime poured from the dead wood like ghostly sap.

Tucker had thrown his case on the bed and was assembling something. “Hey, Tuck, do you mind taking care of this lady’s apartment?” He mimicked phone-girl’s voice. “Don’t worry, it sounds like a total snooze. You’ll be _fine_!’” 

Phoung ran to him. “What are you doing?!” She noticed the metal cylinder he was screwing together. “Is that a thermos? What the hell good is a _thermos_ going to do?!”

“Trust in the thermos the thermos is good.”

The ghost slipped through the door, eyes twitching in every which direction, its mouth moved and spoke gibberish that sounded like warbling white noise

Tucker raised the thermos at its face. It paused. Every eye peered down it.

“’sup.” He said.

 ** _“Gragh?”_** It asked. 

“I don’t really have a good one-liner so…bye.” He pushed a button on the side of it.

A light poured from the end of the thermos. The ghost recoiled instantly- but was unable to pull away. As though it were caught in a vacuum, the ghost screeched and hissed and struggled, but its face hideously stretched until its entire vaporous body unraveled and swirled, caught in a vortex of light until in it was pulled into the thermos entirely. 

Tucker released the button and held the smoking thermos. “Consider yourself evicted. Wait- _dammit_! That was a good one, too.”

Phuong stared at the thermos. Already the smoke around it was clearing. It obviously wasn’t hot, since Tucker was easily holding it. That thing was just…gone. 

Holy crap there had been real ghost in her house and it just tried to kill her. Kill _them_. 

She almost died. Would have died, if it weren’t for him. 

She should. Probably say something. 

“…does this mean you’re charging me extra?”

Tucker let out a surprised laugh, hands shaky and slightly giddy from adrenaline. “Well…you _did_ save me from getting shish-kebabed. I think I can throw in a discount somewhere in there.”

* * *

He stayed and helped her clean up. 

Her sink was covered with green goo, there was a knife in her kitchen wall, claw marks raking down her hallway, and one of her movie shelves had been knocked over. Phuong was almost…thankful for it. It was a physical reminder that it had been real. It had _happened_. 

Tucker made a quick call back to Fentonworks to explain the situation. By some strange consensus, the two of them started on the living room, up-righting the shelf and reorganizing the dusty dvds that were scattered around. At least nothing had been badly damaged- though it did give Tucker an opportunity to poke fun at her tastes. 

“I’ve never even heard of most of these movies,” Tucker read the back of _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ , completely unaware of the _blasphemy_ he had just uttered.

“This isn’t even the shelf of my of obscure films- that was a pretty big hit.”

“Meh, doesn’t sound like it’s for me.”

“If you hadn’t just saved my life I’d be tempted to throw you out the window on principle. Headfirst.”

“I’ll just have to take full advantage of your good graces for as long as I can.”

Phuong blushed. Tucker went back to sorting DVD boxes, completely unaware.

“You and my friend Sam would get along pretty well,” Tucker squinted at _A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence_. “She’s a movie hipster too.”

“Having tastes outside of the celluloid fast food Hollywood calls cinema doesn’t make me a ‘movie hipster’.”

“Hey, some of us plebeians _like_ our double-unnecessary sequel burgers with a side of fried Michael Bay Explosions.”

“That mixed metaphor just offended several of my sensibilities all at the same time.”

“I’m multi-talented.”

“Okay, Mr. Foley. I’ll give you one chance to redeem yourself. Name one movie that you think was an underrated gem.”

“ _The Wicker Man_.”

“Okay, I’m actually kind of impressed. Most people wouldn’t-”

“The Nick Cage remake.”

Slowly, Phuong stood, dropped the pile of movies she had been organizing, and made to walk to the kitchen.

“Uh…where are you going?”

“To pry that knife out of the wall. I finally understand it, now.”

* * *

Sam, as it turned out, was one of Tucker’s best friends from high school, and had married his _other_ friend from high school, Danny, whose family were the town’s local inventors and ghost-hunters, a phrase Phuong would have laughed over a few hours earlier.

Sam was currently recovering from a difficult pregnancy, and both new parents had their hands full with their newborn son- and Tucker’s godson. He gushed over the photos of little James in his phone, explaining how he volunteered to pick up the slack at Fentonworks. 

“So you’re more like a…substitute ghost hunter? How do you even prepare for something like…” Phuong gestured at the damage around her apartment. “This?”

“It’s called four years at Casper High. I’m pretty sure half our graduating class could be used as an anti-ghost militia in case we get invaded again. Actually, come to think of it, that totally did happen one time. We all got matching jumpsuits.”

“At this point you could actually be bullshitting me and I’d have no idea.”

Tucker eyed her incredulously. “You seriously knew nothing about Amity when you moved here? I know the government purges youtube and major news stories about it whenever they can, but still…”

“I wasn’t really…” Phuong stopped scrubbing the ectoplasm in her sink. “It’s been a crazy few months. There were so many things going on, finding a town with ridiculously low apartments for rent seemed like the only piece of good luck I’ve had in a long time.” She scrubbed a little harder, the rhythmic _scrape scrape scrape_ of her brush syncing with Tucker sweeping up broken dishes behind her. 

“Do you want to hear something stupid?”

Tucker stopped sweeping briefly, then started again. “I doubt it’s stupid, but go ahead.”

“For a while there, when the noises, and the rearranging furniture, and the whispering at night finally started getting to me- when I started not _completely_ dismissing my cousin when she tried to explain what was going on in this town- I thought.” She braced both of her hands on the lip of the sink, right over the stained handprints of the monster that made her life miserable in more ways that even it knew. 

“A part of me thought- that maybe. That it might have been my dad.”

“I’ve seen a few family haunts. Not all of them were bad. We even left some of ‘em alone. You called us because that ghost was practically terrorizing you. Do you think your dad would have done that to you, if it really had been him?”

Phuong started scrubbing the sink again, not sure how to answer.

* * *

“Hey.”

Tucker turned. He stood in her doorway again, the thermos with the captured ghost safely stored in the case against his hip. 

“So…” Phuong clasped her hands in front of her, trying not to fidget. This was a bad idea, but it was one of those bad ideas where _not_ doing it was worse than the act itself. “I don’t really. Well. I know that technically I’m your client. Or you are -technically- an employee I’ve hired. But I think we can both agree that this was a bit more atypical than calling the Orkin Man, since we ended up saving each other lives, and all. I was wondering if- maybe- when you leave and you’re no longer here because you’re doing a favor as a good friend or because I’m paying you. If, maybe, it would be okay if I took you out to dinner. As a thank you.”

Tucker stared with the look a man completely taken by surprise. Which, really, surprised _her._ Sure, his taste in movies was terrible, but he was a smart, funny, attractive man who carried baby pictures of his godson in his phone, helped out his close friends, and rescued aspiring movie critics from vicious monsters. 

“Dinner.” Tucker said, voice faint. “Sorry, I’m just. I don’t want to be _that guy-_ misreading signals and making embarrassing assumptions that will end with neither of us speaking again but- it kinda sounds like you’re asking me out on a date.”

“I-” Phuong considered a few good lines ‘sounds like you’re right’ or ‘I can’t speak for that guy but I’m okay with ‘this’ guy. No. He’s asking straight-up for for a clear answer. No beating around the bush. “Yes. I’m asking you out on a date. I’m not sure how we’re gonna top ‘saving my life from killer ghosts’ but I know a really great Italian place with gnocchi that will do its best.”

“Oh.” That was not a guy enthused with the prospect of going out with a lady. Phuong was already feeling a preemptive stab of rejection but kept her face even. “I’m sorry,” Tucker rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m…I’m flattered. Really. You have no idea how big of a boost this is considering- well.” He adjusted his glasses and looked at her with those baggy, tired eyes. “I was just married until about six months ago. It was…” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “As far as divorces go, my lawyer said it was a pretty clean break, but there were still things that ended up…broken.

“Again- I’m _really_ flattered, and I’m really sorry that I can’t. That I’m not in the best place to start trying to pick all that back up again. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

Maybe it was her own disappointment, maybe it was the heaviness of his shoulders, or the heartsore look in his eyes. Maybe she was a tad biased because of the life-saving thing, but whoever Tucker Foley’s ex-spouse was, they were officially on Phuong’s shit-list for All Time.

She doesn’t remember how long they stood there. Her in her recently haunted apartment, him standing in the hall. Finally, she found her voice.

“How about a quiet, non-romantic lunch, instead? As…friends?”

“Yeah,” Tucker nodded, the weight in his shoulders relaxing some. “I…I think I can handle that.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of two birthday fics I did involving these two. The concept of Phuong was a really fun to play with, and I have a soft spot for Tucker-centric fics, since it always felt like he gets sidelined by the show and sometimes the phandom, too. 
> 
> If you took the chance to read a fic about Tucker and some random OC, it's appreciated. I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
